She smiled sheepishly, helped him to his feet, and apologized, explaining she had an urgent bathroom emergency. The waiter’s glare softened some as she hopped over the puddle of ice and soda.
Never one to shy away from action, Ronnie bent quickly to draw the tiny Kahr PM nine-millimeter from the sheepskin holster inside her left ankle. She paused briefly in the dim alcove outside the men’s room. Greeted by the heavy thuds of a fight in progress, she tucked the pistol close to her side, and shouldered open the door.
Something heavy hit Quinn in the back of the head just as he popped Uncle Frank in the jaw with an elbow cross.
Quinn staggered, sickened from the blow, fighting to keep on his feet. He grabbed Frank’s shoulders and drove a knee repeatedly into the man’s groin as a surge of adrenaline chased away his nausea. He spun before the snot blower could hit him again, shoving the older man into his companion.
As if revitalized by some voodoo zombie spell, Frank sprang back into action immediately, soaking up everything Quinn could inflict.
“I’m about sick of this shit,” the kid said, pulling a black pistol from the waistband of his pants. “Get out of the way, Uncle Frank. We don’t need to talk to him th-”
Ronnie Garcia exploded through the bathroom door. She took a split second to survey the situation, and then put two quick rounds in the kid’s chest.
Distracted, Frank’s eyes left Quinn long enough to allow him to draw his Kimber. Cursing under his breath, the older man lunged for the gun on the floor beside his dying nephew as Quinn shot him.
Garcia kicked the pistol away and played her own gun back and forth, assessing the situation.
All three attackers down, Quinn leaned against the sink, panting. The booming gunfire in the close quarters of the tiled restroom had rendered him momentarily deaf.
When he looked up, Garcia’s plum lips made beautiful shapes. He heard no sound but the throbbing whoosh of his own heartbeat.
After a few seconds, he was able to make out partial sentences.
“… hurt, Jeric… get… hospital…”
The disjointed words slowly began to register in his brain.
He grinned stupidly, feeling a little drunk, and took a moment to study this woman who’d just saved his life. Her face was calm, black hair in perfect order, belying the fact that she’d just shot her fourth man in half as many days. Amber eyes locked on him as she canted her head to one side.
“I’m okay,” he said, dabbing at a bloody gash above his brow with the knuckle of the hand that still held his Kimber. He worked his aching jaw back and forth and began to do an assessment to make sure nothing was broken. “I’ve seen worse.” He let go of the sink, felt his knees begin to buckle, and grabbed it again.
“That’s hard to believe,” Garcia said. She nodded at the three men on the bloody floor. Two were dead and a third was unconscious, blowing pink bubbles out a ragged gap of flesh in the bridge of his nose. The flimsy toilet stall lay smashed into pieces.
“Call Thibodaux,” Quinn groaned. “And Palmer…”
“I will… of course…” Garcia’s eyes darted from the porcelain urinal to Quinn and back to the urinal again. “But I… well…” She looked down her nose at his belt with an impish smile. “Looks like you were a little busy when these guys jumped you. You might want to… put away your… pistol…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Somewhere in Afghanistan
CIA paramilitary officer Karen Hunt choked back a mouthful of bile as consciousness slammed into her like a kick in the head. She fought wave after endless wave of nausea, retching against something warm and coarse. Facedown, she blinked burning eyes and tried to stop the swaying motion in her head. She wondered for a moment if she might be on a boat. There was nothing around her but blackness and searing, bone-numbing pain. Rough cords bit deep into her wrists and ankles. Reality sifted back into her brain like grains of irritating sand. It took several seconds to realize she was on the back of a moving animal. The rough wooden packsaddle-and the slow, lumbering gait of the beast-sawed at the tender flesh of her belly just below her ribs.
A heavy blanket kept out not only light, but any semblance of fresh air. The sour stench of yak dung and wet wool cloyed at her throat. Sickened again, she suddenly realized her gaping mouth was pressed directly against the matted hair of the animal.
By slow degree, voices wormed their way in through the rancid blackness. She could make out the thick, phlegmatic tones of men speaking Tajik. Closely related to Persian, it was the common language of the high mountains of Central Asia. Hunt was fluent in Farsi and Pashto. Tajik was close enough she got the gist of what was going on.
Her captors were jubilant men, gloating as they recounted their recent bravery at attacking Outpost Bullwhip. It didn’t seem to bother them that a handful of ragtag Americans had killed over eighty of them. They praised fallen brothers who had died as martyrs in the holy fight, and cursed the dead Americans to roast in eternal fire.
Memories of the battle and of Lt. Nelson suddenly rushed back into Hunt’s fevered mind. She shivered when she recalled the strange little boy who loved chocolate and smiled ever so sweetly as he spoke of cutting off her head.
The yak stopped abruptly, its bony spine heaving with exaggerated breaths. Hunt tried to use the time to readjust but was strapped down too tightly. She was baggage and nothing else. Her hands and the backs of her calves, which must have extended beyond the coverage of the blanket, were numb with cold and lack of circulation. Karen found that if she strained her neck and pressed her cheek against the side of the beast, she could see a stone-covered path and a splatter of green manure beside a cloven black hoof.
Maybe she was dead and being carted off to hell by the devil himself. It would stand to reason… if the devil spoke Tajik.
“Cut deep, my brother,” a voice said somewhere to her right. “We reach Big Headache pass by nightfall…”
A donkey suddenly filled the air with sorrowful braying. Years before, when Karen had first visited the mountains of the Hindu Kush, she’d seen a string of forlorn pack animals with their nostrils slit up each side in a cruel gash. Her father had explained the men who traveled with their pack trains in the highest passes often cut their animals like this. They believed it would help the beasts draw more air in this place they called the Roof of the World.
Karen groaned when the yak lurched forward again, stumbling into a bone-jarring gait. The air grew colder as they climbed and she found herself grateful for the musky layer of warm air that surrounded the animal under the coarse blanket.
When the trail became particularly steep and the yak slowed to catch its breath or pick sure footing, the man walking behind let fly a stream of oaths and curses. His heavy stick struck Karen in the spine as often as it did the yak.
Unfazed, the weary animal continued on, plodding forward at exactly the same gate as before. It had been beaten many times before. She knew her beatings were just beginning.
An eternity later, the yak stopped again, this time on command. Karen strained her ears as shuffling footsteps approached. She heard the thump and scratch of fingers manipulating the cords on the packsaddle.
A sudden blast of light and cold washed over her as the covering was jerked away.
Rough hands tore at the ropes across her back and thighs. At first she thought they’d stopped to give her a break, but one look at these men told her they were not the sort to waste time giving her a pit stop. They’d only paused along the scant excuse for a mountain trial to readjust the saddles before starting a major uphill push.
Towering walls of craggy stone rose into the gray sky. The thin ribbon of trail ahead, wet with heavy fog, wound its way upward disappearing into the same clouds.
Gray sky, gray rock, gray void.
Hunt squinted at the silhouette in a black turban towering over her. The smell of the yak was suddenly a
